littlecheffandomcom-20200213-history
List of Little Chefs
The numbering system for Little Chef has changed many times over the years. When Forte took over the brand in the 1970s they produced maps annually showing all the locations. Their earliest maps organised the sites by road, then this changed to a north to south system. However, as so many new sites were being added this meant frequent and confusing changes so a better way had to be found. In 1975/6, Forte decided to number the sites by age with the oldest, at that time, receiving 001. This system continued all the way up to 1998 with subsequent owner Granada keeping the same system. Each Little Chef then had a plaque inside which displayed this number although it always had a "1" prefix in front of it (Camberley would have been 1001). As Forte were a company with many divisions this may have been to signify that it was the roadside or catering division as opposed to hotels. In 1986, Forte bought Happy Eater. For years they had their own numbering system which worked the same way as Little Chefs (Oldest site had lowest number) but, in 1994, the decision was taken to put them all into the same system. Forte had also decided to rebrand Happy Eater sites as Little Chef so this made sense. At that time Little Chef sites had reached the 500 prefix so, to allow for an easier transition, Happy Eater sites were given a 600 or 700 prefix on maps. Thus, Happy Eater site 001 became 601 and so on. Any new Little Chefs that opened after this continued to take a 500 prefix so as not to waste numbers. In 1992/3 Forte started rolling out Little Chefs in Ireland. To keep this separate from the UK sites, all Irish sites were given a 1000 prefix on maps with 1001 being the first site. In 1994, Forte experimented with Little Chef in Spain. These were given a 3000 prefix. In 1998, Granada bought over AJ's Family Restaurants. Again, to distinguish a former AJ's site, they were given a 6000 prefix although, curiously, these either started with a 63 or 69. AJ's were purchased from Celebrated Group, a large company with many restaurant brands, so this might have been the number that celebrated had allocated. By 1998, so many sites had come and gone closed since 1975 that, for the average motorist, it no longer made sense. Plus Little Chef would talk of having 400-odd sites yet numbers like 6999 would appear on maps. Something needed to be done. Granada took the decisions to organise the sites by geographical area (Scotland, North East, North West, Midlands, Wales, East Anglia, South East, South West). Sites were numbered from north to south in their regions with an area prefix. So the furthest south site in Scotland became S1. The exceptions were new sites which opened post-1998 which were just given the next available number on their area and some of the sites, originally put in the Welsh area, which were later moved into Midlands. This system remained until 2004, adopted by subsequent owners Compass and Permira. New owners People's Restaurant Company didn't produce maps and then in 2008 new owners R Capital changed the numbering system again to a UK-wide south to north system with site 1 being the furthest south. Today, under KFG, the only list of sites is on the website and these sites are arranged alphabetically. This list is arranged using Forte's system from 1975-98 as it ran for such a long period of time. Sites which closed before 1975 are currently given an N/A number while sites which opened post-1998 are just given the next number available in the list, although their site name has 3 question marks after it to signify that this is an assumed number. Some sites, which were scheduled to open as Little Chefs but never did, are also included. In some cases two sites have the same number. This is because Forte would often list a site in a map as "Opening Soon" with an assigned number and then decide not to proceed with it so the number would then be allocated to a different site. This only happened a handful of times.